“Beth.” Elliot said the name as soon as it flowed into her mind. The last piece of the puzzle pressed firmly into place. “You and Beth.”
Kelly hung her head.
“All the times she stopped in. The way she takes care of you. And Rory keeps her distance.” Elliot rambled now, verbalizing every thought as it occurred. “Why didn’t I see sooner? You had Beth, and she left you for Rory.”
“Not exactly,” Kelly said, sounding resigned now. “Though it felt like it at the time. She left me because I was slowly choking her out. I made her feel ashamed of us. Or at least, I made her act ashamed.”
“How long were you two together?”
“Years. Since college.”
“Years? You had a woman like Beth for years, and you kept her in the closet?”
Kelly didn’t respond. Her skin had gone so pale it appeared almost translucent. Did the truth hurt? Or just the fact that now Elliot knew?
Elliot rubbed her face with her hands and leaned back against the edge of her desk to steady herself. “I didn’t believe you really wanted to live in hiding forever.”
“I tried to tell you.”
“You did,” she admitted. Kelly never lied about what she wanted.
“I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry. I didn’t understand. I didn’t listen … to anyone. God, I’m so stupid. I thought what we had was different. I thought we … I could... ” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. I was stupid.”
“You’re not stupid.”
“I am, damn it. I didn’t stand a chance, and everyone knew it but me. All this time. Everyone knew what was happening here but me. You and Rory and Beth, you’d all seen this play before.”
“Elliot, please,” Kelly pleaded. “What you and I had wasn’t the same. You have to believe me. I opened up to you in ways I never did with her, and I felt things for you I never did for her.”
“But it’s still not enough.” Elliot tried to do the addition in her head, but one and one had never made two when it came to her and Kelly. “Are you still in love with her?”
“No.”
The answer came quickly enough. She might’ve been inclined to believe Kelly if she didn’t feel as though her heart were being ripped out of her chest. Here she was falling hard for the first time, thinking she had something new and bold and brilliant, only to find out Kelly had been here before with someone beautiful in every sense of the word. She’d had the real thing, not just some sad facsimile, and yet even Beth couldn’t make her care enough to risk the safe and secure life she’d built.
“Elliot,” Kelly whispered, “this isn’t about Beth. How can I make you see? It’s not even about you.”
Another knife to the chest. “Thanks.”
“Listen to me.” Kelly clutched her shoulders. “This isn’t you coming up short. It’s me. I’ve made my life. I’ve made my choices. These fights are mine alone.”
“And there’s no place for me.”
“Not any place worthy of you,” Kelly said sadly. “You’re strong and beautiful and so much better than anything I can offer you. You’re going to change the world, and you can’t do that from inside my closet.”
The words offered no comfort. The excuses felt too convenient, or maybe she felt too void to process them. It didn’t matter anyway. Kelly didn’t love her, not enough. Maybe she couldn’t love anyone enough to lay down her shadow demons. And Elliot couldn’t force her to.
“Yeah.” She tried to take a deep breath, but her chest still hurt too much, so she settled for short and shallow. Maybe she’d been settling for too little, for too long. How was she going to move on from this?
“Elliot?” Kelly asked softly. “Are you okay?”
“I guess I have to be. I’m out of options.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too, but you’ve made your choice, which means I don’t really have one.”
“You’ve got bigger battles ahead. Someday I’m just going to be a sad memory for you, though maybe eventually not quite so sad as right now.”
She didn’t want to think about someday. She had no more fight left in her. “I’m going to go.”
Kelly stepped back. “I never meant to hurt you.”
She shrugged. One more thing she couldn’t control. She could add it to the already too-long list, but it didn’t change a thing. Every line item Kelly marked off, every emotional box she ticked equaled the same sum. She didn’t have any say in the matter, and she had no choice left but to walk away.
Chapter Nineteen
Judging by the stack of file folders set to be sent out, she’d managed to complete several more returns. But since she had no memory of any of them, she’d probably better flag them for review before calling their owners in to sign. Hopefully she could regain some clarity in the coming days, though she had only a few more left.
At least now she’d had it out with Elliot. The worst had happened, everyone knew all of her darkest secrets, her weaknesses, her failures, and she’d survived. She had nothing and no one left to protect. Everyone saw her clearly, and they’d all walked away. She didn’t blame them. She’d carried the weight of abandonment and anger too long. Anger first toward her mother, then toward the whole town, and later, even toward Beth. She had no anger for Elliot. She wanted her to go. She needed her to. As awful as she’d felt watching the sudden realizations batter her awareness, it would’ve been worse to have them unfold slowly over time, like a cancer eating away at something so vibrant. In cases where the treatment was likely to be as bad as the ailment, she’d rather dole it out in one brutal dose.
And the reality had been brutal. For both of them. At least Elliot would be free now. They’d bounced back and forth so many times in the last two months, but she’d finally seen the resignation in Elliot’s eyes. Had Elliot been able to see the regret in hers?
She stood and shook out her limbs. She didn’t actually regret what she’d done. She regretted having felt the need to do it. Or maybe she regretted not having the courage to make another option viable. Maybe she regretted that she didn’t live in a perfect world, but given the constraints of her existence, she didn’t regret letting Elliot go. At least she would have that to cling to amid all the other sadness bound to consume her going forward.
Stretching her legs, she circled around her desk and into the hallway. She noticed the lights of the bank clock across the square shining in the darkened windows. She’d worked past midnight, so technically it was tomorrow morning, which meant time for more coffee. She moved through the silence to the coffee machine to find it cold and empty. Of course. With Elliot gone, she would lose her connection to more than one addiction. Would she have to go back to making her own flat, bland brews? She sighed and let her eyes fall on Elliot’s desk, now also empty. Without her there, Kelly would get the peace and quiet she’d craved not so long ago. And yet, as with the coffee, she couldn’t help but worry things would forever feel flat and bland by comparison.
Deciding she could do without the coffee or any maudlin metaphors it inspired, she headed back down the hall. Even without the caffeine she wouldn’t fall asleep any time soon, so she might as well get back to work. But as she reached her office, she stopped and stared at the closed door across from hers. Strange how she’d fixated on what the office would be like without Elliot’s presence, the coffee machine, the desk, her voice, and yet she’d kept herself completely closed off to the prospect of considering what it would mean to have this door permanently closed.
Her father’s office had never been an open space. Despite having spent her whole life in these rooms, his inner sanctum still remained sacrosanct. As a child, she’d had the run of almost the entire building. She’d read under the reception desk and napped in the waiting area. As a teen, she’d done homework in the office that would eventually become her own. He’d never kept her out of any part of the business, but his desk had always been off-limits. She’d never questioned the boundary and felt a se
nse of obligation to uphold his privacy even now. But what if he’d left work undone? And why hadn’t she considered this before? What if, in her fixation on Elliot or her reverence for him, she’d missed something important? What if he’d made plans or appointments he couldn’t keep now? For the first time, she let the realization seep in that his burdens, too, were now hers to carry.
Pushing softly on the door, she found it closed but not latched. The gentlest nudge from her swung it silently open. The space smelled musty, the air stale and every surface gray under a film of dust. For her, he’d only been gone a few weeks, but from the perspective of this office, he’d vanished months ago. She hadn’t let herself remember that night, but now she recalled the days leading up to it. He’d been quiet, focused, steady as always. He’d worked late that last Friday, as had she. She’d never liked to leave before he did. Did he sense her eagerness to pull her own weight? Did he ever wonder where she went after work? Did he assume she spent her evenings alone? He’d never dated that she knew of. Why hadn’t she found that odd?
She edged slowly into the room, one shuffling step after another, as she looked around from the diplomas on the wall to a few awards facing outward on his perfectly organized desk. She smiled. Of course he wouldn’t have left anything out of order, not even after a late Friday night. She ran her finger along the edge of his richly colored wooden desk, collecting dust and revealing the natural cherry. Every detail spoke of him, and she luxuriated in noticing each one. She let her gaze drift and pause where it would in the cone of light from the hallway. Notebooks stacked neatly atop a large desk calendar still turned to January. Three pens to the right— one blue, one black, one red— would’ve left him ready for any writing occasion. A manual calculator beside the keyboard to a desktop spoke of his ties to the past even as his shiny new Mac showed his refusal to resist progress. He liked order and tradition but never stopped looking for ways to do things more efficiently.
Walking slowly around the desk, she noticed a brown cardigan she’d given him last Christmas. He’d hung it neatly across the back of his high, ergonomic chair. She caught the soft fabric lightly between her fingers and lifted it to her face. Inhaling deeply, she could still catch the subtle scent of him, or maybe memory filled the void and her imagination sent forth the spice of his aftershave over the fresh undertones of his soap. The visceral cue overwhelmed her, mist clouding her eyes as the ache in her chest spread rapidly to her limbs. She eased into his chair, still holding the sweater tightly against her.
With her eyes closed, she almost felt as though he were just around the corner. He would come back any minute and probably not be thrilled to see her sitting at his desk on the verge of tears.
“Kelly? What in God’s name?” She could practically hear him. “Are you sick? Are you hurt?”
Those were the only reasons he ever expected her to cry. She wasn’t sick, and heartache probably wouldn’t have constituted hurt in his book, either. Not that he didn’t understand the concept. He probably knew better than anyone what it meant to love and lose, but they’d never talked about it. She’d missed so many chances. She hadn’t wanted to seem weak or needy. She hadn’t wanted to disappoint him, or worse, make him think he’d let her down, but she’d never stopped to wonder if, in her attempt to protect him, she had missed the chance to really know him. She’d lived with remorse in so many areas of her life, but never with him. She’d always been so sure that, even when she came up short for everyone else, she’d at least done right by him. He had been the one person she’d never wondered “what if” about. Now, sitting in his empty office, clutching a sweater that offered her only reminders of a physical connection to him, she felt the finality of unanswered questions.
She tried to set her jaw against desperation. Opening her eyes, she blinked away the tears and saw a row of three small pictures. They didn’t face outward like the awards. These three were clearly meant only for him. All encased in small, plain wooden frames, all snapshots, all candid and informal, none of them would’ve caught the eye of a stranger, but each one had a prominent place in his daily line of sight.
The one farthest right and most out in the open was of the two of them. She wore a graduation robe, its once-bright blue slightly faded from the years. He wore a suit, and his red tie was slightly askew because he’d pulled her close with an arm proudly around her shoulder. His smile was clearly for the camera, but the twinkle in his eye spoke volumes. They’d made this milestone together. He’d helped her study, packed her lunches, attended all the plays and parent-teacher conferences, and he’d graduated as much as she had. He had guided her to adulthood, and he seemed genuinely pleased with how she’d turned out. Her expression seemed more guarded, more quietly pleased. Had she truly let herself enjoy the moment, or was she already looking ahead to the next challenge? Probably the latter. Still, she could bask in his pride now, at least retrospectively.
The second photo didn’t inspire the same kind of uninhibited joy. It was of her mother. She was heavily pregnant, but aside from Kelly’s unborn presence, there was no one else in the picture. Still, she smiled brightly in a way that made Kelly suspect her father had held the camera. When had her mother stopped looking at him with so much love in her eyes? Why had he kept the photo? Didn’t it serve as a reminder of how far they’d fallen, or did he want to remember what it felt like to have someone look at him that way? How had he faced the image every day? She couldn’t take it a second longer, so she turned to the last photo, only to have her breath ripped from her lungs.
There, from inside a plain frame, she and Beth stared back at her. No, not back at the viewer, at each other. They were so young, or at least so much younger than she felt now. They sat in lawn chairs in her father’s backyard, probably at a barbecue. She had no memory of the event or of the photo being taken. She felt almost certain she’d never seen it before, and yet amid all the unknowns, she had no doubt about how they felt in that moment. She would’ve recognized the look of pure love in her eyes even if she hadn’t seen it seconds earlier on the face of her mother.
Glancing back and forth between the two photos, no one could mistake the resemblance. The shape of their faces, the subtle curve of their lips, the lift of their eyes. In that frozen moment, she’d looked at Beth the same way her mother had once looked at her father.
Her chest tightened so much she clutched the cardigan to her sternum. Why did he have the photo? Had he taken it? Why frame it and put it next to a picture of her mother?
She grabbed the frame and turned it over, looking for some clue. It didn’t make sense. Digging, hoping for some explanation he could no longer give her, she unfastened the clasp with trembling fingers and pried the photo from the frame. Turning it over in her hands, she noticed his neat, concise handwriting across the back. The caption simply read, “Kelly and Beth, two years together.”
She sank back into his chair as she fought to get a full breath of air into her lungs.
He’d known. He’d known all along. Why hadn’t he said? Had he struggled with the idea? Was he grieving silently for her like he did for her mother? Was that why he’d put the pictures side by side? Did he feel betrayed? If so, why keep the constant reminder? Why frame and display something he disapproved of?
Why had she assumed he would disapprove?
Why had she never trusted him enough to ask?
Grief struck hard again, clawing at her from inside. Why? Why? Why? The endless refrain would echo into eternity. Dropping her head to the desk, she shivered from the cold seeping into her heart. Never. She would never have the answers, only the echoes of the past.
“I know who you are.”
His last words hummed low through her ears. Lifting her eyes once more, she stared at the photo.
“I know who you are. I love you.” She’d been glad he recognized her in the moment, that the stroke hadn’t robbed her of a final goodbye, but had the words meant more?
“I know who you are.”
He’d said i
t so many times. He’d repeated the phrase even though it clearly pained him to do so, even after she’d acknowledged its surface meaning.
“I know who you are. Love you.”
Sitting up, she grabbed the photo and held it close. As her tears fell, she wiped them away with his sweater. He knew. He wanted her to know he knew. He wanted her to know he loved her. He wanted to remember the way her mother had looked at him, and he wanted to see his daughter look at someone the same way.
All the hiding, all the loss, all the guilt, all the fear, all the remorse— and he knew. He knew who she was, and loved her for who she was, and he used his last breath to make sure she knew it.
This time she didn’t even try to stop the sobs as they wracked her body.
“Hello?” she croaked hoarsely into the phone.
“Elliot Garza?”
The voice sounded only vaguely familiar through her pre-coffee haze. “Yes.”
“This is Helen Hartwell.”
“Helen.” She sat upright and reached for her pants. She didn’t want to be naked on the phone with a potential employer. “Hi. I mean, hello, how are you?”
“I’m well, and I’m sorry to bother you on a Sunday morning, but I didn’t want to interrupt your work time in the lead-up to the filing deadline.”
“It’s fine. You’re no bother,” she said, not wanting to go into detail about how she wouldn’t be going to work today, deadline or not. “What can I do for you?”
“You can accept a fellowship offer from the Tax Policy Institute.”
She’d expected this phone call for days and had worked for it for years, but nothing had quite prepared her to actually hear the words.
Close to Home Page 28